The King in Yellow, Robert W. Chambers [best short novels .TXT] 📗

the great Bouguereau, looked at her with respect. “May I ask,” he said diffidently, “whether you are a pupil of Bouguereau?”

“I?” she said in some surprise. Then she looked at him curiously. Was he permitting himself the liberty of joking on such short acquaintance?

His pleasant serious face questioned hers.

“Tiens,” she thought, “what a droll man!”

“You surely study art?” he said.

She leaned back on the crooked stick of her parasol, and looked at him. “Why do you think so?”

“Because you speak as if you did.”

“You are making fun of me,” she said, “and it is not good taste.”

She stopped, confused, as he coloured to the roots of his hair.

“How long have you been in Paris?” she said at length.

“Three days,” he replied gravely.

“But⁠—but⁠—surely you are not a nouveau! You speak French too well!”

Then after a pause, “Really are you a nouveau?”

“I am,” he said.

She sat down on the marble bench lately occupied by Clifford, and tilting her parasol over her small head looked at him.

“I don’t believe it.”

He felt the compliment, and for a moment hesitated to declare himself one of the despised. Then mustering up his courage, he told her how new and green he was, and all with a frankness which made her blue eyes open very wide and her lips part in the sweetest of smiles.

“You have never seen a studio?”

“Never.”

“Nor a model?”

“No.”

“How funny,” she said solemnly. Then they both laughed.

“And you,” he said, “have seen studios?”

“Hundreds.”

“And models?”

“Millions.”

“And you know Bouguereau?”

“Yes, and Henner, and Constant and Laurens, and Puvis de Chavannes and Dagnan and Courtois, and⁠—and all the rest of them!”

“And yet you say you are not an artist.”

“Pardon,” she said gravely, “did I say I was not?”

“Won’t you tell me?” he hesitated.

At first she looked at him, shaking her head and smiling, then of a sudden her eyes fell and she began tracing figures with her parasol in the gravel at her feet. Hastings had taken a place on the seat, and now, with his elbows on his knees, sat watching the spray drifting above the fountain jet. A small boy, dressed as a sailor, stood poking his yacht and crying, “I won’t go home! I won’t go home!” His nurse raised her hands to Heaven.

“Just like a little American boy,” thought Hastings, and a pang of homesickness shot through him.

Presently the nurse captured the boat, and the small boy stood at bay.

“Monsieur René, when you decide to come here you may have your boat.”

The boy backed away scowling.

“Give me my boat, I say,” he cried, “and don’t call me René, for my name’s Randall and you know it!”

“Hello!” said Hastings⁠—“Randall?⁠—that’s English.”

“I am American,” announced the boy in perfectly good English, turning to look at Hastings, “and she’s such a fool she calls me René because mamma calls me Ranny⁠—”

Here he dodged the exasperated nurse and took up his station behind Hastings, who laughed, and catching him around the waist lifted him into his lap.

“One of my countrymen,” he said to the girl beside him. He smiled while he spoke, but there was a queer feeling in his throat.

“Don’t you see the stars and stripes on my yacht?” demanded Randall. Sure enough, the American colours hung limply under the nurse’s arm.

“Oh,” cried the girl, “he is charming,” and impulsively stooped to kiss him, but the infant Randall wriggled out of Hastings’ arms, and his nurse pounced upon him with an angry glance at the girl.

She reddened and then bit her lips as the nurse, with eyes still fixed on her, dragged the child away and ostentatiously wiped his lips with her handkerchief.

Then she stole a look at Hastings and bit her lip again.

“What an ill-tempered woman!” he said. “In America, most nurses are flattered when people kiss their children.”

For an instant she tipped the parasol to hide her face, then closed it with a snap and looked at him defiantly.

“Do you think it strange that she objected?”

“Why not?” he said in surprise.

Again she looked at him with quick searching eyes.

His eyes were clear and bright, and he smiled back, repeating, “Why not?”

“You are droll,” she murmured, bending her head.

“Why?”

But she made no answer, and sat silent, tracing curves and circles in the dust with her parasol. After a while he said⁠—“I am glad to see that young people have so much liberty here. I understood that the French were not at all like us. You know in America⁠—or at least where I live in Milbrook, girls have every liberty⁠—go out alone and receive their friends alone, and I was afraid I should miss it here. But I see how it is now, and I am glad I was mistaken.”

She raised her eyes to his and kept them there.

He continued pleasantly⁠—“Since I have sat here I have seen a lot of pretty girls walking alone on the terrace there⁠—and then you are alone too. Tell me, for I do not know French customs⁠—do you have the liberty of going to the theatre without a chaperone?”

For a long time she studied his face, and then with a trembling smile said, “Why do you ask me?”

“Because you must know, of course,” he said gaily.

“Yes,” she replied indifferently, “I know.”

He waited for an answer, but getting none, decided that perhaps she had misunderstood him.

“I hope you don’t think I mean to presume on our short acquaintance,” he began⁠—“in fact it is very odd but I don’t know your name. When Mr. Clifford presented me he only mentioned mine. Is that the custom in France?”

“It is the custom in the Latin Quarter,” she said with a queer light in her eyes. Then suddenly she began talking almost feverishly.

“You must know, Monsieur Hastings, that we are all un peu sans gêne here in the Latin Quarter. We are very Bohemian, and etiquette and ceremony are out of place. It was for that Monsieur Clifford presented you to me with small ceremony, and left us together with less⁠—only for that, and I am his friend, and I have many friends in